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Welcome![edit]

Hello, Rme22031, and welcome to Wikipedia! My name is Shalor and I work with the Wiki Education Foundation; I help support students who are editing as part of a class assignment.

I hope you enjoy editing here. If you haven't already done so, please check out the student training library, which introduces you to editing and Wikipedia's core principles. You may also want to check out the Teahouse, a community of Wikipedia editors dedicated to helping new users. Below are some resources to help you get started editing.

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  • You can find answers to many student questions on our Q&A site, ask.wikiedu.org

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me on my talk page. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:10, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]


Notes[edit]

Hi! Here are my notes:

  • This needs to be edited for neutrality, as there are a lot of opinion-type statements. For example, the following sentence is an opinion:
Although her genre of poetry is debated, it's unquestioned her revolutionary poetry questioned cultural acceptance in America.
The issue here is who exactly is making the statement. Are critics making this claim? If so, they need to be specified. Are you making the claim? If so, this is seen as an opinion and original research.
I'd also be a little careful with phrases like strong Asian presence. This is something that is typically used to refer to Asian culture as opposed to being of Asian descent, so if the source material only stated that she had parents of Asian descent I'd leave it off. If they did surround her with Asian culture, it would be better to specify that with how and what aspects of the culture they exposed her to.
  • In the same note, be careful of words like accomplished since they can come across as promotional in tone since they're so frequently used by marketing people. It's seen as a little loaded on Wikipedia so it's better to leave it out of the lead or to disarm it by presenting it with attribution such as "Song has been noted as an accomplished poet by peers and scholars". The same goes with terms like "love for" or "passion for", since they're so often used in promotional materials. They're honestly words that are pretty innocuous in every day life but are seen as sort of non-neutral on Wikipedia.
  • Avoid slang and euphemisms like the plague, as they're seen as too casual (at best) and at worst, they can be confusing to people unfamiliar with the terms. For example, you used the term welcomed in relation to Song's children, however this could be confusing to someone unfamiliar with how the term is used with childbirth and assume that they welcomed their child in the same way you'd welcome a guest. The children should be written about along the lines of "In 1983 Song had her first child, a son. Two years following his birth the family had to move to Denver due to her husband's medical residency. While in Denver Song had a second child, a daughter, in 1986."
Another note - I wouldn't use the term forced because of it comes with a lot of connotations and assumptions about the term. Basically, the term forced gives off the impression that there was absolutely no choice and that the move was made under duress - which almost certainly wasn't the case. I tend to avoid the term myself when it comes to general biographies for this reason.
  • This needs more sourcing, especially when it comes to details of Song's personal life. Essentially, all claims should be backed up with a reliable source. You can definitely use primary sources for this, if you were curious - they just can't show notability for Song.
  • In the case of Song's husband the Dr. title should only be mentioned and not used in front of his name per MOS:DOCTOR, unless this is a pseudonym or stage name he's widely known under like Dr. Ruth. It's better to just describe him as a doctor and then after just use his last name when referring to him, minus the professional title.

Something else to take into consideration - there's already an article on Song at Cathy Song that has more sourcing. I would definitely use that sourcing in the article and also use the text - there's no real reason to reinvent the wheel, as the saying goes. Now one thing I did notice with the article that does concern me is that her mother is described as a Korean immigrant in the live article, but in your article she's described as second-generation. In the United States the term second-generation is used for people who were born and raised in the United States, but had parents that immigrated. In this situation I'd definitely research this more and try to determine whether Song's mother was a first or second generation immigrant. It looks like her father is second-generation since his mother was brought to the US through an arranged marriage- this looks to be covered more here, but I don't see a lot about her mother offhand. One source calls her second generation while I've found describe her as a Chinese orphan, suggesting that she was born in China. If we can't find any sort of definitive answer, I'd suggest either only writing that her mother was Chinese-American (vague, but still accurate) or writing that sources have described her mother as been described as both a first and second-generation immigrant. To be honest, this is probably why a good chunk of sources just describe her mother as Chinese-American rather than specifying anything. It may be that this is unclear and her mother was never fully open about this, which is possible.

As far as general sourcing there are things out there like this on the Internet, but I would definitely recommend mining your university databases for sourcing since that will typically be the strongest. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:11, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]